Held in Tension: Sexuality and Spirituality

Navigating Sexuality and Faith in Religious Spaces

There's a conversation I had recently that keeps replaying in my mind. It started with a Facebook post about the conflicts between sexuality and spirituality in Christian communities, and before I knew it, I was in a deep exchange with someone facing what they called a "horrifying" internal conflict. They were an aspiring Anglican priest in Nigeria, caught between their calling to ministry and their authentic self.

This isn't just their story. It's the story of countless individuals sitting in pews, leading worship, teaching Sunday school, or aspiring to ministry, whilst carrying a weight that feels unbearable. The conflict between sexuality and spirituality in religious settings is real, raw, and deeply personal.

The Weight of Worthiness

What struck me most in our conversation was how quickly we default to the language of worthiness and condemnation. My response to them came from years of wrestling with these same questions: Jesus died for us regardless. Grace teaches us godliness. These aren't just theological platitudes; they're lifelines for those drowning in guilt.

The fundamental question isn't whether God loves us despite who we are, but whether we can accept that God loves us because of who we are: fully, authentically, completely. When we understand that the Father sees us through what Christ did for us, not through what we do ourselves, it changes everything. Or at least, it should.

The Complexity of Conflict

As our conversation deepened, I found myself laying out the layers of conflict that many face. It's never just one thing. There's the matter of attraction itself: acknowledging it, understanding it, accepting it.

Then there's the question of what to do with that attraction. Do you seek companionship? Commit to celibacy? Try to change? Each path comes with its own set of challenges and consequences.

For those called to ministry, like my conversation partner, the stakes feel even higher. In conservative religious environments, particularly in places like Nigeria where the Anglican Church takes strongly traditional stances, the choice can feel impossible: your calling or your truth, your ministry or your authenticity.

The Geography of Grace

I mentioned Reverend Jide Macaulay to them: a gay Anglo-Nigerian Anglican priest who founded The House of Rainbow and now ministers in the UK. His story illustrates something crucial. Sometimes finding peace means finding new spaces. Not everyone can or should leave their religious community, but knowing that affirming spaces exist can be lifesaving.

The geographic and denominational differences in how churches handle these issues are stark. What's considered grounds for exclusion in one congregation might be celebrated in another. This isn't about church shopping for convenience; it's about finding communities where you can worship authentically and serve fully.

Compartmentalisation versus Integration

Near the end of our exchange, I suggested something that might sound counterintuitive: sometimes we need to compartmentalise to gain liberty from our conflicts. This isn't about living a double life or hiding parts of yourself. It's about recognising that different aspects of our identity might need different kinds of attention and space to develop.

You can be deeply spiritual and sexually aware. You can be called to ministry and attracted to the same sex. You can love God and struggle with church doctrine. These aren't contradictions to be resolved but tensions to be held with grace.

Moving Forward

What I've learnt from conversations like these is that there's no one-size-fits-all solution to navigating sexuality and faith. For some, the answer is finding affirming religious communities. For others, it's reinterpreting scripture through a more inclusive lens. Still others find peace in celibacy or in stepping away from organised religion whilst maintaining their spirituality.

The key is this: the conflict doesn't have to be horrifying. It can be transformative. It can lead to a deeper, more authentic faith, one that doesn't require you to leave parts of yourself at the church door.

To those facing these struggles, know that you're not alone. There are communities, resources, and people who have walked this path before you. The journey towards integrating your sexuality and spirituality might be challenging, but it doesn't have to be a journey of condemnation. It can be a journey towards wholeness, towards a faith that embraces all of who you are.

Because at the end of the day, any God worth worshipping is big enough to handle our complexity, our questions, and our authentic selves. The real question isn't whether God accepts us. It's whether we're brave enough to accept ourselves.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Thought Picnic: Discerning insidious familial device

Sometimes fraught in thought

Finding the form of words to illustrate certain situations that are difficult to talk about would usually be an area of ability I would rarely be wanting or lacking. Yet, having harboured these thoughts for days, I finally began to gain a handle on things enough to express to an extent, how I felt.

We are essentially products of the environments and influences in which we find ourselves from childhood experiences and observations that many expect with the passage of time for us to forget through to the recent times where the occupation of situation might be both distracting and at the same time uncomfortable.

Abuse in its other forms

I seek not to commend myself in the ways that facing adversity and hard times has been borne with varying levels of stoicism and fortitude as much as with the help, support, and prayers of many who are acquainted with the circumstances.

In a moment of vulnerability, I was caught off-guard by parental device, and we usually are, when the focus was shifted from issue to collateral. Indeed, how well we are doing does reflect on others, just as the adverse might too. What it should never become is using the preponderance of the affected to press the point of your situation. The exertion of emotional menace can be insidious.

People forget the facts

I have a lot to say about many things, that I give myself to the patience of listening should not be misconstrued as acquiescence or acceptance, it is love, liking, respect, and even consideration that lends my ears to incident, inclination, assumption, and the paranoia that afflicts others to the point that it negatively impacts the listener.

People who have for decades cannot resolve their differences and then regale us with constant and unrelenting tales of woe that you have heard from time began, their stories seep into your narrative and could become your own story if care is not taken to understand what is at play.

During that conversation, it was implied that one had deviated from the kind of instruction one had been given from childhood, but that is a total misreading of the historical fact. Despite the good intentions at the time, I remember things quite vividly and differently. The experience was and is never one to which I would want to return. The path in which I seek better understanding and direction is quite different, but for the sake of amity over conflict, I have kept my peace.

The God loves me race

The things I remember should make me angry, in the particular, they should be totally unforgivable, but for the purpose of living, one should keep a tender spirit, even a heart of forbearance with an understanding that we all have many faults and limitations for which we have been forgiven not to impute the various infractions of others on them by total disengagement.

The race I run is a process of learning, the teaching for life will be valuable and the testimony at the end will be of wonder and beauty. I count my blessings even in the depth of despair and despondency that life gives hope, health is wealth, and the best is yet to come. God loves me, I just need to appreciate that more. My journey remains mine to pursue, if others are affected, they have run into my lane, and I keep my focus on my race.

Trooping the Colour of emotional attachment

Some emotional points of self

There are certain things that carry an emotion and sentiment for which there is not suitable articulation of words to describe, these are deeply seated in the person we are and how we express ourselves.

Watching the Trooping the Colour on playback at this moment, I reflect on those things for which I have not found adequate expression yet can be found dotted amongst my writings that give me a sense of pride, being, and identity. My spirituality, my Englishness, and the institution of the British monarchy.

Where one stands

On the first, I share occasionally, in which I determine to find the reality of divine intervention in every sphere of my existence and much of which leaves me conscious of the fact that there is much more to learn and understand of the mystery it entails.

The second is controversial to some as much as it is significant to me, and though the debate might rage about Britishness or Englishness, I am quite originally an Englishman of Nigerian heritage, and no apology is made of understanding that this sense of identity is reinforced by so many influences, experiences, and places. Sometimes, it is just the inability to appreciate the individuality and uniqueness of someone else that fuels the disrespect for how we choose to be identified.

I say the institution of the monarchy rather than just the monarchy for it does not matter who peoples the offices that pertain to the monarchy, yet the weight of history and tradition bears heavily on the shoulders of the monarch who through life is conditioned to certain discretions to maintain the mystique of the said of institution.

Love of a great idea

Though most of our lifetime this institution had the face of Queen Elizabeth II, there is a generation of personalities that have passed on with a wistful sense of loss as the new Carolean era of Charles III takes hold. The ease with which the machine of state transitioned occasioning amazing pomp and pageantry that no other people than the English can muster is one that imbues one with a sense of loving and patriotic adoration.

The love of fatherland without it being mistaken for political or royal adulation, England is my land, it is my country and from this land I have explored many places including that from which my parents came to study here and witness a country in radical transition and bruising change.

When it comes to ceremony and music, something in me wells up in full agreement that this land, and it being Perfidious Albion to some still exudes history, beauty, wonder, excitement, amazement, and pluck. In every nook and cranny, you find England is a place in many people’s hearts. God save the King!!!

The social beings we are

The needs of I

Recently, I have found myself seeking the succour of different support environments that attend to the many facets of my personality and being. It is a realisation that no one is an island, and I have understood quite well that these are not distractions, but engagements.

Spirituality, as a man of faith, I have been developing my personal fellowship in listening to messages and given to prayer; then besides my Anglican inclinations to which I have given much adherence, I have also sought an evangelical and Pentecostal community to involve myself. The morning for the establishmentarian and the evening for the free-flowing and sometimes unstructured, yet quite edifying fare.

And what matters more

Beyond that, for the mind and sense of well-being, I attend a support group that gathers black men living with HIV, once a month. In a way, I find myself transitioning from the hermit sequestered in my apartment for days, into a reticent and introverted social being. 

It is the strangest feeling that to some I appear to easily strike up a conversation with strangers, yet in these communities if I am not approached, I look like a shrinking Violet with a yearning that I can neither express nor commit to any form of networking.

Then again, I am thankful for these different community and support environments, as they address different needs in the quest towards being a more complete person. However, the situation I need the most is the company, companionship, and embrace of my partner and my lover, in whose daily verbal intercourse I revel and need much more. Everything else would always be secondary to the power of love, the place where two hearts are knit in one and nothing else matters.

Ash Wednesday as I participated

Learning a new focus of trust

This week has been one of the interesting contrasts in how to maintain focus in an environment of distractions, some harmful and others hopefully more beneficial. One thing I had decided was to be more participatory in this season of the church calendar, and this I mean, the Church of England – Anglican Communion arrangement.

I probably could have given some heed to doing something for Shrove Tuesday, I had the flour, and I could have made pancakes, yet I was exhausted and drawn away in thought and reminiscences that were quite unprofitable and redolent of interactions with seemingly sincere but quite unreliable people. Eventually, I find I can step away from the situation to reflect on how in words of the old hymnal, Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus, ‘the arm of flesh will fail you, ye dare not trust your own’, or that of any other too.

An eerie feeling of compounding disappointment and dejection seeks to occupy your thoughts and reins for which despondency intends to feed you the tears of apparent helplessness, yet you cannot relent for the hope that abounds and the love of God you are striving to understand and learning to believe beyond platitude and the scribed to experience.

A mortal in eternal purpose

The Lenten season is ushered in with Ash Wednesday and I had some excitement about attending the church service which was termed the Holy Eucharist with the Imposition of Ashes. It is one tradition I have never before participated in. When I told my mum about it earlier today, she thought it was a purely Roman Catholic tradition, I guess there are many areas where Roman Catholic and Anglican conventions overlap or are shared.

It was a solemn meeting in a medium capacity seating for that time in the afternoon. The highlight was The Imposition of the Ashes, wherein, the congregation files to the front before the ministers to have the sign of the cross in ashes placed on their foreheads. With the words said:

Remember that you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.
Turn away from sin,
and be faithful to Christ.

Taken from the second clause in the verse of Genesis 3:19, “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

Quite a moment of spiritual recognition and an almost trembling appreciation of our humble mortality in the context of an eternal dispensation. I do wonder if it would have felt more poignant if that was said in Latin, “Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.”

Intention for guidance and direction

After that, we then participated in the Breaking of the Bread signifying the work of redemption and the new covenant in Jesus Christ as our gathering ended quietly apart from music from the majestic Stoller Organ.

This period of Lent would be used to help attuned one’s spirit to the witness and the voice of the human spirit, given the direction of the Holy Spirit, away from distractions, distortions, noise, and confusion that can so easily leave one unsure of purpose, direction, peace, and guidance.

On the question of spirituality, I am learning that it is more an individual experience than identification with creed, church, or denomination. Where you are blessed is where you should be.

The Bible to read, to hear, to see

My religion and spirituality

My spiritual journey through life has been exemplified in life-affirming and life-defining experiences from childhood that has ranged from terror to exhilaration, infirmity to wellness, adversity to prosperity, empowered by the force of hope, that helps the growth of faith and love. Another way to say this is I know a broad spectrum of the human experience from insufficiency to sufficiency in numerous facets of life.

Underpinning all this is my Christian beliefs and faith with foundations that bear the weight of what has become my story. Influenced by syncretic, African-initiated, Anglican, and Pentecostal inclinations, the former two are more by inducement when I had little agency, the third represents the faith of my fathers, whilst the last is one of determination and choice that has a history of almost four decades.

All this against and in accommodation with my sexuality presents an opportunity rather than a challenge that has been profitable to my health and well-being in spirit, soul, and body. I would be the first to say, for the trauma and experiences that have pitted sexuality against religion, some have been wounded, damaged, ostracised, or worse. My disposition leans more towards the pragmatic than the dogmatic.

For the reading and hearing

For my Bible Study, I once had many hardcover bibles before I found the ease of running multiple versions and translations on my PC, and then on all devices, laptops, tablets, and phones included. My preferred Bible Study tool is the e-Sword with an interface that accommodates, bibles [70 world languages (mostly free), 45 free English versions & 20 premium English versions]  commentaries [a few world languages, 35 free English & 23 premium English], and dictionaries [16 free English & 3 premium English].

Online, you can go for Bible Gateway or Bible Hub which is essentially free, both of which also sport versions and languages. Another bonus with e-Sword is that it has a built-in audio playback for the baseline King James Version (KJV), whilst other audio versions can be downloaded free or purchased from another website. The product licences are lifetime perpetual licenses, as I have products, I bought 15 years ago that are still valid as long as you can remember the email address you used for purchasing the associated modules.

I do have the propensity to use more audio content nowadays, I even remember having the gospels in audio playing back and I had the immersive experience of thinking I was just around the corner from where I was. Indeed, reading and meditating on scripture is a wholesome activity, however, I note that “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Rom 10:17 KJV)

From seeing to believing better

There is the added value of an audio-visual experience, for instance, to get a good idea of how Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross in a modern and relatable way, The Passion of the Christ (2004) film was a very good depiction, as it made the words jump off the pages to present a palpable revelation of what the crucifixion entailed.

Obviously, I have seen many gospel dramas from chronological scripts to subject matter indicative plays, usually tightly aligned to the text and not essentially helping with a deeper understanding of the gospel. They are useful and there are many such on Amazon Prime, but I have always thought the subject could be tackled better.

Into Samaria for a good drink

Then, yesterday evening as I was scrolling through Facebook, I came upon a short trailer that dealt with Jesus meeting with the woman at the well in Samaria, as narrated in the Gospel according to St John 4:1-41. After the conversation, the woman returned to her city to announce that the man she had just met told her everything she had ever done, the passage only has where Jesus said she had had 5 husbands and the one she was with was not her husband.

What I saw took an artistic licence and made it a relatable human story broadening the context to show how she could not obtain a divorce from her last marriage, why she was alone at the well and made an attempt at naming her first two husbands with the experiences that greeted those marriages. Together, you gained a better understanding of what then seemed like gospel in precis.

More to netting fish

I soon found out that it was The Chosen (TV series) taking aspects of the gospel narrative with Jesus Christ at the centre along with backstories and contextualisation, in the third series and available on YouTube, Angel Studios app (downloadable to tablet, mobile, or SMART TV), Amazon Prime, NetFlix, and other streaming services, for free with frequent nagging screens to pay it forward.

When I began watching the episodes, and this can be a spoiler, the backstory to when Jesus stepped on Simon’s boat to preach to the crowds on the shore, before asking him to launch the nets into the deep that all the boats were fully laden with fish and then he asked the fishermen to follow him suggested Simon was heavily indebted to the taxman with the risk of losing both his home and his boat.

In desperation and frustration he was in league with the Romans to shop poachers fishing during the Sabbath, then the whole night we went fishing, joined with other fishermen and caught no fish all night. The incredulity of a stranger asking him to cast his net in the daytime from his experience of fishing was daunting, then having caught the fish, Zebedee who lost his two sons to discipleship was not left bereft.

Zebedee sold off the fish to pay off all their debts and would have had enough to hire extra hands. That detail was not present in the gospel.

Choose The Chosen

The Chosen fleshes out the narrative and I think it redounds to understanding the gospel better. Yes, there were many times I cried in sympathy and was touched by how the gospel came to life. Luke 5:1-11 (NIV)

In my view, e-Sword and The Chosen come highly recommended, there might just be that revelation that blows your mind. 

Of dreams and battles in other tongues

I dream active dreams

Vivid dreams find a landscape in my sleep, and I cannot account for when they occur apart from when there is too much fat in my food close to when I take my pills, that the interaction between the chemicals allows for that side effect.

At other times, it is a busy day that leaves me so utterly exhausted, once I fall asleep, there is a kind of incapacitation that helps my relaxation, but I get any sleep I can whenever I can, for there is a tendency to insomnia that I try to arrest before it takes hold.

One apparent sleep disorder I have endured is parasomnia, where undesirable and physical events occur in my sleep that I am punching out or kicking out, at other times, I am talking in my sleep and rarely in typical conversation but in serious confrontation with people or situations that occasion possible or imminent harm.

Winning in all fights

From deep within my psyche, I find myself engaged in some sort of spiritual warfare, speaking out against assailants to the scheme of the Acts of Apostles. Fundamentally, I am a man of intense spiritual persuasion and belief that some realms in which I dwell are multidimensional and needing of presence in attention, observation, assertion, understanding, engagement, and conflict where you should triumph.

One other peculiarity is whilst English is my mother tongue and Yoruba is a learned language, my dream language is usually strongly Yoruba than English, I seem to be more assertive and sure of myself and what I determine to do in that language with a lot more clarity and forcefulness. I marvel at the power of dreams and what many victories I have been conferred with when met with an attack.

Prejudice has no place in Christianity

The Rainbow flag fluttering on the Tower of the Manchester Cathedral today 

The Rainbow flag - Manchester Cathedral

The tenderness that prevails

The fact that I could even be religious at this time of my life is a product of divine tenderness and mercifulness that fills me with both awe and gratitude. This is because my personal experience with many strands of Christianity in the church, the customs and traditions that became rituals of strict observation replacing Scripture with the seeming helplessness of adherents whilst they were taken advantage of by those in authority creating personality cults is enough to be bruised for a lifetime.

Yet, within this morass of faith and spirituality, the conflicts of thought, truth, and humanity, I have found something that gives me a sense of belonging along with experiencing wonder in spirituality and belief. I have written many times about the fact that I have returned to my Church of England Anglican roots, it works exceedingly well for me.

Outsiders everyone

The readings in church today along with the sermon delivered by the Dean of Manchester was a ministry in diversity. The first part was in Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Romans, the first verse and part of the second, then the verses 29 to 32. This was one that jumped out at me that I did not appear to notice that well before.

The Message translation says it best for all the versions I have reviewed. I start with, “God’s gifts and God’s call are under full warranty—never cancelled, never rescinded.” Yes, I still speak in tongues and I got introduced to that in the Pentecostal phase of my Christian growth, I get much comfort and sustenance from doing so.

However, it is this that was amazing to me, “In one way or another, God makes sure that we all experience what it means to be outside so that he can personally open the door and welcome us back in.” God has made us all the same, wanting and unqualified that we all can recognise His mercy. [Bible Gateway: Romans 11: 29 – 32 (MSG)]

The crumbs are enough

The gospel reading came from the book of Matthew 15:21-28, where a Syrophoenician Canaanite woman came to Jesus to ask for the healing of her daughter who was demon-possessed. At first, Jesus ignored her, but she was unrelenting. Jesus asserted He was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel, but she approached more closely and worshipped Him.

At that point, Jesus said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” This is a statement I have never fully understood because it reads as both an insult and deep prejudice. Somewhere else Jesus had said, and I paraphrase, “Shouldn’t this daughter of Abraham who had been bound by Satan for 18 years be set free on the Sabbath?” Yet, here, it appeared he was not ready to help.

The woman however challenged his prejudice with a retort, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” As far as she was concerned, the crumbs falling off the table would feed the dogs, and the crumbs of a miracle she wanted for her daughter would be enough to heal her. [Bible Gateway: Matthew 15: 21 – 28 (NKJV)}

The great faith of outsiders

To which Jesus commended her great faith and at that instant, her daughter was healed. It is notable to realise that Jesus always marvelled about little faith amongst his disciples and his people, but commended great faith non-Jews, like the Roman centurion who just needed Jesus to speak the word to heal his servant, of the Canaanite woman who believed crumbs falling off the table to dogs would heal her daughter. [Bible Gateway: Matthew 8: 5 – 13 (NKJV)]

More pertinently, it was about addressing prejudice, discrimination, inequality, difference, racism and anything divisional factor that diminishes our humanity. Our Dean was born in South Africa, here, he would be identified as black, in South Africa, he would be distinguished as Coloured. He experienced Apartheid at the beginning of his ministry in Durban and saw the Christian charity of people who refused to have prejudice remove him from the parish to which he was posted.

An inclusive church

During the last week, he supervised the hoisting of the Rainbow flag on the tower of the church, it was his clear message of inclusiveness of the church at which he has been the Dean since 2006. I was quite moved by his message; I was close to tears. The New Testament, Gospel and Christian underpinnings of the readings, his sermon and philosophy were clear, the church will not exclude anyone.

There is a bigger message here, but I reflect on how I have been able to come to terms with my sexuality and spirituality. A difficult journey in many respects and very personal too. I remember telling my pastor in my Evangelical church about my struggle with homosexuality, he asked questions, sought understanding, never judged nor condemned me. He always saw me first as a person and asked how he could be of help.

Further on, he wanted to appoint me to a leadership position even as the head of the global movement cleared said that was not something he personally would do. The fact is, we would not all be hot-blooded heterosexuals on the unwavering trajectory to marriage and procreation.

Knowing ourselves to know others

I cannot answer the question why, but God has a mission for everyone. I, in myself, whilst engaged in the church in other activities declined the offers to lead because I felt inadequate by reason of my situation even as my pastor saw more in me than I saw in myself.

The Rainbow flag flying proudly on the tower of the Manchester Cathedral was significant in that someone did write to the Archbishop of Canterbury to complain and the response of Archbishop was what the Dean decides to do at his church and chapter is his business.

Down in Cape Town where we attend the St. George’s Cathedral which was once the seat of Archbishop Desmond Tutu from during the Apartheid era, Brian and I find a welcoming church, an inclusive community, diverse in persons and walks of life, yet acknowledging of the fact that prejudice of any kind would not feature in the community.

People who have known prejudice should not themselves be purveyors of prejudice when prejudice of any sort is challenged, a way is opened to the embrace of our extraordinary humanity. Then in the first reading, we see that “God makes sure that we all experience what it means to be outside so that he can personally open the door and welcome us back in.”

You’re left asking one question, how can you be merciless if you have once received mercy? That is the basis and crux of Christianity, it cannot be escaped, it needs to be faced up to.

Is God trying to make His way home?

Mystery is awesome

The mysteries of life and what we choose to believe. I have many questions for which there are few answers. Something inside me suggests I ponder and meditate within rather than give voice to the misgivings, the misunderstandings and absence of clarity on matters I am trying to find rhyme, reason or rationale for.

Reason stands out as the place where I am allowed to consider, dispute, be persuaded, be convinced or otherwise. It is where the mind is exercised with knowledge and example, bringing you from what you understand to a place of faith and assuredness.

Rationale is for me something different, where situations and circumstances have to be given a basis for their existence without esoteric or ethereal underpinnings that cannot be explained away.

One of us to see

Much of what one might consider spiritual sits on a tripod and maybe a fourth leg of finding out more. The quest for knowledge, understanding, wisdom and experience must never cease. Curiosity ensures you do not fall to the delusion of having acquired all that is to be known.

In One of Us, a song first recorded by Joan Osborne and written by Eric Bazilian, I find myself gravitating to the cover by Prince in his multi-CD Emancipation album, which is a cut down version of the original lyrics. The lines below evoke a sense of awesome wonder to which one can only be forced to respond.

If God had a face, what would it look like
And would you want to see it
If seeing meant that you would have to believe in things like heaven
And Jesus and the saints and all the prophets?

[PrinceVault: One of Us]
[AZLyrics: Prince cover of One of Us]

We may or may not know what God looks like, the Bible says we are made in God’s image, but what representation or perspective is that? Are there physical, mental and/or spiritual dimensions to that imagery? [Knowing Jesus: Image of God] Further on in the Bible, it says, Moses saw parts of God, but not the face. [Bible Gateway: Exodus 33:18-20]

Spirited to new truth

Three questions bring the weight of the matter to the fore, the mystery of God’s face, whether we would want to see God’s face out of whatever human need presents and if after seeing we would be so convinced as to believe everything we have heard before.

Then that conversation between Moses and God, “You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.” There is no life to live on earth once that encounter becomes a reality. It makes you wonder if the context of life is death or being spirited away from an imperfect earth like Enoch, Elijah or Jesus at His ascension. [Wikipedia: Entering heaven alive]

Sometimes, I wonder if indeed, we are ready for that experience and that is probably why, God is not one of us.

[]

My good conscience is my guide on my spirituality and sexuality

In church for service

The last church service I attended was two Sundays ago at The Cathedral Church of St George the Martyr (St George’s Cathedral) in Cape Town, just a 10-minute brisk walk from our hotel.

My partner and I were out the night before, but as it was our last weekend together, we were determined to attend church that morning. I got up first and to get Brian out of bed I had to sprinkle water on his face, I eventually succeeded.

We left our hotel dressed in matching jackets and just missed the processional hymn. We settled in our seats and joined the sung eucharist of the 1^st Sunday after Epiphany.

Sharing our spirituality

Brian is the first partner I have had with whom I have been able to freely express my spirituality and this in the Church of England, the history of its inception is somewhat irrelevant to the scheme of things, because whilst the church appears to attempt to conform to conservative values, it has to exist in contemporary times and there is much adaptation going on, despite the public pronouncements.

We chose St. George’s Cathedral because it has a history of tolerance, acceptance, and the subversive, especially during the Apartheid era. One of the stained-glass windows has a depiction of the Garden of Eden with a black Adam, from the mid-1960s.

A traditional welcome

It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cape Town who is also the Primate of the Anglican Church of South Africa occupied once by the Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu from 1986 to 1996. He has always been an ally of the LGBTQ+ community and the church in its outreach beyond the tenure of this world-renowned and well-respected archbishop continues to invite all people to fellowship and take communion in the congregation of the blessed.

It is interesting that my home church in Manchester does not appear to be as traditional as the one in Cape Town, canticles, incense and Latin feature a lot in the service. There are times when I almost feel lost in what is going on. In Cape Town, the clergy conducts most of the service in English, but the readings will be done in isiXhosa and Afrikaans along with the Eucharistic and Communion prayers.

Bearing gifts to all

It makes for an inclusive and representative church and it is impossible that we have not been noticed since we began attending the church since Easter 2019. That last Sunday, as the offering was being taken, we were approached by the ushers to help take the communion bread and wine to the altar.

Confused as we were, we were well instructed and walked the full length of the church down the aisle just behind the incense bearer to the altar where we presented the gifts, bowed to the clergy and then stood aside for the gifts to be blessed before we walked back to our seats.

The surprise, the amazement, the suddenness of being randomly chosen to serve in the church, only for a moment meant so much to us. Whilst not reading a vindication of our relationship to it, at the very least, when Brian and I get married, we would indeed seek to be blessed at the St George’s Cathedral.

On the matter of who we are

On the issue of the pastoral guidance [PDF] issued by the Anglican Church regarding abstinence from sex in gay or straight civil partnerships, it is a matter of conscience for me. That they have adopted the directive that sex outside marriage “falls short of God’s purpose for human beings” is understandable as it helps avoid the straining schism in the church between traditionalists and modernists, I do not intend for it to be dogma, instruction or commandment. [The Guardian]

I am as a human being and sexual being, I find expression for it in the relationship that best helps me thrive as a human being. I am a gay man, I am in love with another man, our relationship is predicated on more than just sex, it is a matter of the heart, of the soul and of the body, the moments shared, the love we have for each other that is not available to another, just between us. I do not also intend to return to an early time in my life where who I was consumed me with guilt and self-loathing, for what I could neither change nor deny.

In my good conscience

Maybe some people are called to abstinence and others to celibacy, it is a gift for which not everyone is equipped to observe without fallibility. The pastoral guidance seeks to impose the impossible about human expression and humanity in the fulfilment of a loving relationship, something everyone who is of age should be able to enjoy with impediment when in a committed relationship.

I will neither deny my sexuality nor my spirituality, both are a complete declaration of who I am, what I am, how I exist and where I belong. Jesus Christ went to the cross for all, not for the few. If I in my good conscience before God and man is not convicted of wrong in the person that I am, I approach the altar with humility and service, partake in the Communion and fulfil the calling on my life.

In that, I am satisfied, it is guidance rather than diktat. We live at peace with each other and get called suddenly to serve in the body of Christ. Shalom!

In a brotherhood we stand at !Audacious Church

In brotherhood we stand

Last weekend, I attended a men’s conference at !Audacious Church which goes by the title Brotherhood.

The theme of the conference was “Faith for …” and one can only say that the messages were enlightening, inspiring and exhilarating.

Yet again, from another perspective as I have seen in other men’s conferences in Pentecostal circles before, these gatherings are overtly muscular, an orgy of heterosexual celebration seeking an inlet to the vulnerability of full-grown men.

The view from the book

We were not disappointed and really I cannot take issue with situations that I willingly and wilfully let myself in for.

This conference taking place just as we celebrated the first gay marriage in the UK elicited comment from the Pastor about what the bible says and I guess we’ve heard it all before and again.

My concern stems from the fact that I do know what the bible says, we all, if religious, know most of what our religious tomes say and how sometimes we tend to hang on every word of the letter and leave out the humanity needing ministry.

Beyond the book to people

Now, this is not to attack anyone, but I have many times come to understand that what the bible says might mean a lot to me yet very little to others. The others whose impressions of religion have come from the experiences they have suffered from being put down as unworthy, unclean, common, hell-bound, hopeless, dirty and much else.

Their lives have been made miserable by people who portend to have some spirituality with the arrogance of ‘knowing’ that they are closer to God than others.

In that vein, it is difficult to see how to persuade and proselytise without bludgeoning the person into helpless submission, it is unhealthy.

My Good Samaritan view

I hope that when I encounter the broader diversity of our humanity, I am a light than a flame, that I have an embrace of warmth to offer than an accusative finger pointing out where they are wrong, bad, difficult, rotten or inferior.

For some people the spirituality I espouse would only become effective when I meet them where there is a need, an angel of compassion than hopes that the encounter would bring a thankfulness, a cheerfulness, some happiness and a hope. I believe that gets further than “the bible says.”

If the Samaritan who we now know as the Good Samaritan had followed spirituality over humanity as the priest and Levite had done before him as they walked past the man left for dead by the wayside, we would have had no such lesson of how our humanity matters more above spirituality. Neighbourliness transcends norms.

Left a spiritual Humpty Dumpty

Yet, in these conferences, we have ample space for conviction, though in some more vulnerable than others, they would be consumed with guilt and condemnation, broken and helpless, the showing of hands with a prayer supposed to transform the person almost in an instant. But some are left spiritual Humpty Dumptys with no king’s men to put them back together again.

Between denial and acceptance

As you wander between discernment and critique, it is important to know when you have become part of the mass hysteria as the crowd is worked up to a frenzy. It is at that time that so many things Anglican allow for a personal and private spiritual awakening within a public celebratory space.

Pentecostal circles are highly expressive, seeking a public declaration and almost at the same time bringing a sense of satisfaction to the protagonists who deign in acknowledgement, the power of persuasion.

The atmosphere is combative to the point of being aggressive, your response is required else you are almost condemned for being ashamed that it compels you to react – on whether it is right, I cannot say. But if God knows the heart of every man, does a man have to see the hand of every heart?

Choose where I go

I left the conference sat on a fence disputing between who I am and whether I should accept myself or reject myself. Under that kind of mental duress, much harm can be wrought, for a man who is not a husband or father, nor aspiring to be one, a lacking is exposed that only having been happy with yourself before and having learnt to love who you are can help dampen the supposed inadequacies.

At my age, I sometimes wonder if men’s conferences have much to offer me after from a stark realisation that I might well be too radically different from others who bare, seek or manage the responsibilities of husband, father, marriage and strongly conservative leanings.

I am well advised to choose the conferences I attend wisely.

To hear the voice of motherhood

Feelings of utter discomfiture

Caught between the vagaries of life and unhealthy resentment, I watched this day approach with some foreboding and trepidation.

It felt like that uncomfortable feeling that greeted my emotions as I returned home from any outing, the long walk to the end of the street that represented the house that did not feel like home.

The building was comfortable, my room self-contained and private, but the atmosphere laid heavy like a cloud of despair, I rarely felt happy returning there.

Just over 28 years ago, that place became a closed chapter, a place I only visited because I had a duty to, but I avoided because I did not need to return for anything.

Reflect and review

Therefore, as my mother’s 71^st birthday approached, I found myself writing, Thought Picnic: To wilfully forget a parent's birthday – it was something I had the capacity to do and I had worked myself up for it – I could be that detached.

However, when I looked on Facebook to see a picture of my mother and a celebratory message from my sister, and the night before chatted to my sister-in-law about my misgivings, it became something I had to face, I must do the needful.

The first call did not get through, but a few hours after, I got through, and she was quite pleased to hear my voice just as I was to hear hers.

Soothed by motherliness

All the knottiness and tension dissolved and the soothing and comforting voice of motherhood in a mood of celebration and happiness became the balm to aches and pains of pent up uneasiness and angst.

We talked for longer than we usually do; mostly in English as we always did, exchanging pleasantries and making each other laugh with incredulity at the things we say and recollect of times past.

Then I wondered why things just soured, it is because there are still many things I have not shared for her to understand some of the tough journeys I have been through.

The little I shared brought prayerful encouragement and empathy. For all our differences and conflicts, she is quite capable of deep understanding and appreciation to show affection and compassion.

Of why and where

Why do we end up in conflict with our parents?

Where is the balance between the familiarity and the distance to make relationships work?

This is difficult to gauge, but it is something we on both sides have to work on, for to cherish and honour for as long as we have them and to forestall the deeper wounds of regret if we do not strive to make amends and make things right.

Even I realise how parent-child dissonance can reflect spiritual apoplexy meaning a lack of fulfilment in many areas of significance to a person’s sense of wellbeing.

I am glad I had the opportunity to reconnect, and I hope I can make more of this as time goes by.

Our little gods with diplomatic immunity

Home and away

Times I have wondered about the richness of Yoruba culture thriving in lands far away from West Africa in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, in Cuba and in Haiti.

Extricated by the atrocity of slavery, men carted as beasts of labour and burden to enrich imperialist regimes and kingdoms of the last three centuries, the stories are gruesome.

However, what intrigues me more is the little gods that went in the hearts and the minds of our people to these places, the Orishas – spirits and deities that never died, but thrived, Yoruba religion lives.

Our common humanity

This is however, a subset of humanity’s spirituality, all people from all the ends of the world carry their little gods and idols around with them such that no matter how far they are from their original lands nor how long they have been away for generations, these idols and charms remain significant with at least a remnant.

Somehow, the somewhat fashionable trends towards humanism, atheism or New Age religions appear to be people uprooted from the core of their ancestral existence, finding new commonality with a different kind of diversity.

This is not just evident in animist and ancient non-establishment spirituality and religion but we find this in Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and other broader based religions.

Stranger still

I step out of my residence in London into a major street with six different mushroom churches of Nigerian origin, the crowds creating the familiarity of ceremony, culture, ritual, liturgy and community far away from home.

Two years ago, a Zambian pastor wrote of what he uncharitably termed Nigerian Religious Junk exported to other countries, I could see what he meant.

A big hold

However, I suddenly realised that my appreciation of the reach of little gods was stunted when a British man of Nigerian origin showed off his amulets tucked under his clothes; in the process the lie about lost cultures was debunked.

The charms, the concoctions, the incantations or even the syncretism manifest in what we believe are the established belief systems find firm believers where we rarely expect to see them.

The little gods of spirituality and beliefs, known and strange, still hold sway and never die through the generations. No effect of civilisation damaging as it might seem today at the original homes and grottos of these little gods can destroy their potency as exiled or immigrant little gods who need no papers to live and multiply in foreign lands, they have diplomatic immunity.

Thought Picnic: Coming to terms with my stupidity

My stupid scars

Sometimes I wonder about the stupid things that I have done that has left deep and enduring scars.

Stitched up and left to heal, I tinker with the freshness of the wounds preventing its prompt healing whilst enduring the pain and itch as if they have become comforts of my existence.

Then I come to myself. The scars will remain but they must become stories, having their own long tales of how I acquired them, but having my body recover, recuperate, regenerated and restored.

Constantly, I have to alert myself to what is good for me and what militates against my health and welfare.

Scars of beauty and hope

Time to nurse my scars to health and deal with the things that so easily distract me, the quest to please myself, the need for approbation in attempting to please people and understanding that from a spiritual standpoint, my God is pleased with me; I just need to understand, honour and become more aware of that truth.

Loved, blessed and favoured beyond what I can find words to express, a rediscovery of spirituality brings grounding without which one is distracted, uninspired and listless.

I am learning new things, and this is offering opportunity and expectations. The story continues; we are on the up.

Thought Picnic: Before you call him a man?

In distance and in nearness

Distant and near has been the journey from home, distant in person and near in the mind, distant in its reality but near in the memory, distant in the possible but near in the impossible, the ambiguity and ambivalence of existence captured in realities that life is changing and priorities are shifting as one becomes more distant to others and near to oneself.

It was never easy, the hold that beliefs had on all of them that led to initiations into activities that simply weakened the bonds whilst creating longings that none could fulfil as needed and left the journeyed way out at sea that there was no boat to go home.

Once of the same beliefs

What the eyes have seen that reside in the memory is no more the reality, it is far gone that it has become the stuff of dreams, dreams that relive times that can never be now but come into the now with fearful impact from the unresolved, the undiscussed, the unsolved and the ignored.

There is anger, there is regret, when they could have listened to each other, they attacked each other and now that the listening could have been of the greatest value the bridges are too tattered for a crossing that risks a plunge down into eternal oblivion, they have grown more distant and never so near.

They all once believed the same, attended the same temple and grew knowing it did not have to be hard, at least that is what the children thought but amongst them, they fought, they railed, the jostled and rivalled.

They did things

She went out to wildernesses of supplications to prophets of the eerier and the utterly bizarre, rituals of incantations derived from Psalms prayed into all sorts of liquids, candles lit to outshine the sun, there were enemies everywhere; at home, at work, amongst enemies, amongst friends, within family and far abroad, to her marriage, against her children, they were consumed in a never ending battle of Psalmist wars that they were never sure they will win, each glimmer of hope was one that was almost but never grasped.

He had his issues, always denying lechery but seemingly always compromised, a dab hand at the core animist rituals, shaved heads, tortoise shells, charms and many more things that unlike her were kept away from the purview of the kids, discretion was evident and at play though in the end you never knew what he believed, the old or the new, the customary or the fashionable, he seemed to be able to straddle both systems in marriage, in involvement and in engagement belying a maturity to be envied.

He saw things

The boy was lost in all worlds of identity, discovery, expression and impression, each path seemed fraught with danger and peril, he never found the opportunity to reach out when it really mattered, things happened in ways that brought the empathetic out of her and the sceptic out of him.

It all culminated in one fateful night when earlier in the day, the stories shared to the hearing feasted on the most fertile imagination that as the dark came, it was able to create apparitions that only those eyes could see and voices only those ears could hear, all in the presence of people who could not understand the beginning of the knowledge of fear that brought terror beyond the control of all around.

Whatever it was, he had seen the devil and that was twice in 6 hours, red-chested, horned, tall and scary did not begin to describe it, he has searched and been unable to determine what that phrase he heard in middle of the night was – Poofau! Poofau! It was terror that put horror to flight and the gateway to much else that defined a journey that has never found words.

His road made out

Rituals too many to all sorts of religious practitioners and charlatans, baths in houses and groves, in forests and in pits, with lizards and too many unmentionable, everyone brought a story, a view, a prophecy or a reading, tackling it from all corners, he ate the inedible like performing magic tricks, scarified to draw blood on all parts of the body with all sorts of concoctions rubbed in, he had become a reliquary of absurd unexplainable theologies and a living receptacle of fetish practices that were forgotten lifetimes ago.

Conflicts came with the urge to break away when they were needed and then he veered off on a tangent of religious beliefs that left them first scared, then hostile and ultimately implacable, the purposes for which one was to exist failed as this path offered nothing but the reality of great disappointment.

Cursed from the source

One Sunday, he returned from church, she was livid with rage that the order never to believe as one had now chosen to believe was defied and there and then in her room, she stripped and cursed her son from the womb from whence he originally came that if he defies her again he will wander away never to be seen again.

He never understood the significance, there was nothing to fear from that act and they never talked about it afterwards though he did defy and did continue to do what he believed for himself and with that came separation and distance unbeknownst to the man who probably would have been absolutely livid with rage with her having tolerated much of her deviation from the conventional into the esoteric.

A wilderness of the world

He has however wandered away, far from all that is conventional, proper and expected, charting his own course away from prying eyes, he has died to emotions that once made them near, nostalgia is only a matter of taste than presence, the memories are things one lives, but the pictures today are too difficult to look at, the changes that come with age have wizened them all, they are all closer to the grave and as distant as ever in life.

That distance was consolidated when he found himself in hospital with just 5 weeks to live if the medicines did not work, he was there alone though maybe not alone, who could tell, but they were not there. He fought to live but lost everything else apart from the hope that something might just be made of a life that has done much and wasted much – time, resource, opportunity, fortune and relationships – regrets that could sink a man loom but they are ones you strive daily to walk away from.

How many roads must a man walk down, before they call him a man? To them, he has not walked enough roads and to him, he is honestly past caring, he cares enough for the basic connection that has history and a past but the present brings some resentment, some anger, some bitterness and very little forgiveness – this is not even half the story but it is a start - the wander in the wastelands of the world continue as tomorrow, if it comes, becomes another day.